Freeform’s ‘Pretty Little Liars’ (S7 Ep.17 Review)

The episode opens with her and Ezra taking dance lessons. She’s completely distracted because she’s still feeling extremely guilty about what she did in the last episode. However, when the class concludes, she notices that AD has called her quite a few times, but she decides to push that aside and wait until she’s alone to return the calls.

Later, she finds out that AD wants her to deliver something to Spencer’s house and she refuses, but AD gets her in line real quick by threatening to use a police report that Aria filled out a few years ago against Ezra.

So, fast forward a few scenes and we find Aria at Spencer’s house. She makes up some excuse about delivering food to them and while Spencer’s back is turned (and after her mother and father leave the room) she connects some random phone to their Wifi and drops it in a box. After doing that, she makes a hasty retreat and gets out of dodge.

We can tell that Aria didn’t want to do that, but AD is using Ezra’s freedom against her, so I can kind of get it. But, at the same time, I just want her to come clean to her friends because when they find out (and we all know they will) she’ll be on her own and, to be completely honest, Aria is the weakest link. I don’t think she’ll be able to survive without the rest of the girls. Not to mention the fact that it’ll suck to see their friendship end because of something that AD did.

So, with all that being said, while I do feel bad for her, I still think that she got herself in this situation by trying to save her own skin. She should’ve stuck with the group and AD would’ve singled her out.

Moving on, Aria ends up having this strange dream. It seems like a scene from an old musical. It’s set in a prison and she’s wearing a veil, meaning she’s waiting to get married, and we see Mona (playing a correctional officer?) singing and dancing around. While all this is happening, we also see Ezra getting beat up by the rest of the inmates and when the two finally make it to the alter, Ezra’s all bloody and Aria looks terrified. Their officiant ends up being Mrs. Hastings and when Aria tries to apologize to her (I’ll explain why later), Mrs. Hastings blows up at her and she ends up waking up.

This is another example of Aria’s guilt, but moving along. The episode ends with Aria receiving another text from AD, where she’s told to look for her reward in The Brew. She goes to search for it and it turns out to be two more puzzle pieces. She sneaks into Ali’s house to attach the pieces and AD gives her another reward: the police report that was being used against her.

Also, I probably should mention that Mona saw Aria pick up her ‘reward’ and that could come and bite Aria in the butt later on.

Now for Spencer.

We’ll start her off with the phone situation. So, as I said earlier, Aria dropped a phone off at her home and after Aria leaves, it starts to play a recording of a conversation that Mr. Hastings and Mary Drake had in the past. Apparently, Mary was aware that her sister, Jessica, and Mr. Hastings were trying to kill her. Everyone searches frantically for the source of the recording, but no-one’s able to locate it.

Later on, however, Spencer ends up finding the phone and coincidentally (or maybe not so coincidentally) ends up speaking to Aria about how that recording ripped her family apart.

Now, a part of me feels that Spencer knows what Aria’s doing. She seems extremely suspicious of her and it usually doesn’t take Spencer long to find the answer to a mystery, so if she doesn’t know now, I’m sure she’ll be the one to blow Aria’s cover.

Anyway, she has another run in with the detective outside of her home and he questions her about she and Caleb’s past relationship. Spencer does an amazing job of getting him to back off and I just have to say that I love how quick she thinks of her feet. She got him out of her hair fast.

However, after speaking with him, she gets into her car and finds Mary sitting in the backseat. She tells Spencer to drive and they ended up at some creepy motel. She tells Spencer about how she knew about her father and Jessica’s plans to kill her. However, she was able to get Jessica first. She also let Spencer know that she wanted to see her, but Mr. Hastings wouldn’t let it happen.

Right before they conclude their meeting, Mary asks Spencer to run away with her. The scene cuts before she answers the question, but the next time we see her she’s confronting her parents (mainly her dad) about the things that Mary told her. He doesn’t deny it because, in his eyes, he was protecting his family. He really believed that Mary was a danger to them, so he was willing to do what needed to be done.

I’m not sure if that warranted a murder, but this is TV, so I’ll let it slide. Later, we see Mrs. Hastings telling Spencer that they’re no longer leaving Rosewood and that she will be giving up her senate seat. She tells Spencer that there would be no point in doing it because she would always be looking over her shoulder for someone to ruin her dream.

I felt so bad for Mrs. Hastings in this scene. Like Spencer, she got caught up in Mr. Hastings crap. He messed up pretty badly and now his wife and daughter are having to deal with the consequences of those actions. Such a heartbreaking moment between mother and daughter.

At the end of the episode, we find Spencer visiting Mary again. She tells her that she will not be running away with her. She feels that her friends and family need her. Mary accepts that and vanishes and I can’t help but wonder if that was the last time we’ll see Mary Drake.

I have no idea, but what do you think?

Our next Liar is Hanna.

The first time we see Hanna, she and Caleb end up getting questioned by the detective about the flood that happened at The Radley. Someone, apparently, saw them there. They dodge his accusations pretty easily and the next time we see Hanna she’s with the other girls.

They’re trying to decide if and when they should play the game because Hanna’s panicking about the detective’s visit. He tells her that they have more evidence and she believes him, so she’s trying to finish the game before he solves the mystery of Archer Dunhill’s murder. While the girls are having their little debate, Mona walks in. They aren’t sure whether or not they can trust her, but she reminds them that she helped them cover up Archer’s murder, so she’s not only trying to save their lives, but also her own.

I think having Mona on their side can be a good thing. She’s very crafty and she knows how AD thinks. I definitely think that they’ll do better with her than without her.

Fast forward and we find out that Hanna’s mom is back in town. She runs into Caleb at The Radley and confesses that she’s worried about Hanna. She’s asks him if her daughter is in any type of trouble and he, of course, says no. She comes to Hanna’s condo for dinner and she asks Caleb why he’s back with Hanna. She thinks that he came back because something went wrong and she’s kind of right, but he doesn’t tell her that.

He tells her that he came back because he needed to figure out how much Hanna meant to him. He also asks her permission to marry Hanna. It was so sweet that I could’ve cried. I love Hanna and Caleb together and I’m so happy that they’re turning out to be endgame.

At the end of the episode, they end up spending a romantic night together in a tent. They even exchanged cute little ‘rings.’ It was so sweet!

Now for our final Liar, Emily.

She and Mona worked as a team for most of this episode because Mona worked some of her investigative magic and got the name of the fertility doctor that did Ali’s procedure.

Mona schedules a meeting with him and they sit down (as a couple) and discuss what they’re looking for. However, before they get too far into the meeting, they bring up Ali’s name and he immediately freaks out and asks them to leave. They do, but Mona swipes a magazine off his desk. That magazine still has his home address on it, so they go snooping and return after finding proof that he received a huge sum of money from an unknown person.

Of course, he doesn’t know who paid him off, but he did agree to give them the donor’s ID number.

At the end of the episode, we see Emily walking Mona to her apartment. Mona’s acting strange and she’s trying to rush Emily along. She, eventually, gets rid of her and we see her enter her apartment and she’s in the middle of a very thorough investigation. Mona is really trying to find out who AD is! Her walls are covered in photos, graphs and everything. She’s determined to unmask AD and I’m all for it.

As I said earlier, if anyone can unmask AD, it’s be Mona.

Great episode and I can’t wait until next week. We’re getting closer and closer to finding out AD’s true identity.

What did you think of tonight’s episode of Pretty Little Liars? Are you as excited to unmask AD as I am?

Also, Alison wasn’t in this episode. According to Emily, she’s in New York visiting her brother, Jason.